


A Little Less F U & I'd Like to Stay

by gryffoned



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: M/M, Phanfiction, type one diabetes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-20
Updated: 2015-03-20
Packaged: 2018-03-18 17:28:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3577869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gryffoned/pseuds/gryffoned
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dan Howell has Type One Diabetes and this is how the hell he deals with the complications</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Little Less F U & I'd Like to Stay

**Author's Note:**

> This is a oneshot written pretty close to heart, and as I'm sure not many of you would know so much about Type One Diabetes, you can either Google it or ask me about it on my tumblr: nohumanoidquality.tumblr.com.

 

            “Oh shit, fuck, ow that hurt,” Dan hissed at his finger, sporting one little, growing drop of blood as his other hand fumbled around for the test strips that, of course, he _had_ to have forgotten to put into the meter before he decided to spring the needle and pierce it into his fingertip. Over possibly what he now concluded to have been the exact spot of skin he has tested on not a long time before.

            _243_ , the meter read, the little black screen with its obnoxious green and white and the reading almost taunting Dan, and the quiet _beep beep_ the device made when he threw away the test strip left him wondering how many different ways he’d be able to destroy the thing. Fiery pit of lava. Maybe he’d use it to explain to the landlord the dent in the wall. Blame it on emotional distress. Evidently he doesn’t, he knew these things are damn expensive and frankly he doesn’t want to have to deal with his endocrinologist looking at his graphs and pushing up his thin rimmed glasses disappointed; because his A1C still isn’t low enough, and _even_ _better,_ he is unable to criticize Dan’s every move over the last six months because of loss of data. _243_ , the screen blinked out and Dan grumbled, silently patting himself on the back for his self restraint while looking at the cluttered mess of the dinner table, searching for his insulin pen.

            “Dan?” Phil asked as he pattered down the stairs. “Are you okay?”

            Phil arrived beside Dan’s disheveled form, shuffling and folding over slabs of papers (with dates and too many boxes, times and scraggly handwriting because Dan’s awfully tired and why did he have to fill in the carbohydrate counts, blood sugars, and his insulin doses? He’s not stupid and it’s not as if he’s new to this business) cursing underneath his breath and frantically brushing hair out of his eyes.

            “Hey hey, Dan, sh, calm down, here let me help, come on, get up,” Phil chanted as he straightened out piles of paper and disposed of various uncapped needles into a red sharps container. “I heard you yelling. Are you okay Dan?”

            “Of course I’m fine, you muffin, just...low pain tolerance and I hate needles,” Dan mumbled. “What has a guy gotta do to enjoy a bag of Maltesers in peace?”

He heard Phil let out an amused breath, anticipating the smile spreading across his face.

            “Figured as much,” Phil said. Dan chuckled weakly, chewing on his lower lip and picking at his fingers. “And ah”--Phil lifted from behind him the plastic, navy blue pen with a dial at the end, fidgety with ridges-- “I found it!”

            Dan’s smile wavered. “I also don’t...like that either. At all.”

            Phil hummed in acknowledgement and set the insulin pen back down, wrapping his arms around Dan’s middle as the pouting boy tried to hold his feigning annoyance.

            “But think about it Dan, what if you don’t take your shot and leave your pen too close to a fire and it combusts, and this entire complex explodes and next thing you know you’ve just started the second great FIRE of London,” Phil enthused, his arms wild in a flurry of movement, ending in a pose most similar to that of a praying mantis. Dan cracked a smile but shakes his head. “Small possibility, but still some.”

            “Maybe I won’t have my Maltesers then.”

             Phil sighed, puffing his cheeks.

             “Syringes then?” He proposed. “You say they hurt less.”

              Dan’s eyes creased at the corners and his tongue stuck between his teeth, “I can’t believe I haven’t thought of that. Much better.”

              Dan stumbled his way to the kitchen first, his head throbbing, but not quite. It felt more accurately like someone had just stuffed a load of cotton around his brain, so a calm stabbing might be more precise. Though granted this was a daily occurrence, it should be common knowledge that no matter how many times lightning singes your eyebrows it will never be a pleasant experience.

              “I swear I’m going insane,” Dan mumbled, his head tucked underneath his arms leaning on the kitchen counter.

              “Should I—“

              “Yeah, go on,” Dan gave a little wave of approval without looking up and he heard the refrigerator door close with a soft click. “Here, give it to me, I’ll do it.”

              His vision blurred as he lifted his head, the vial placed into the palm of his hand. He struggled off the orange cap of the syringe as he tried to clear his head.

              “It’s close to dinnertime anyway so let’s just take one shot then, yeah? A hundred grams of rice, so that would be twenty two carbohydrates. Stir fry, I’ll make some stir fry so around another ten? Twelve? And then your Maltesers, about another twelve I suppose. So forty six carbs, that would be eleven units, Dan,” Phil rambled, pulling out items for dinner, and about five different measuring cups before he found the one he needed (they’ve lost the ring keeping them together long ago). Dan’s vision unfocused directly when he was pushing the needle into the vial and nearly maims himself before he decided to set it down and push it towards Phil, who smiled with the (only) tranquility Dan needs.

              And the night proceeded.

              And Dan went out of his way

(as this day was a repeat of every other day, and goddamn if he had the choice to erase this forsaken disease, he’d hardly think once)

              researching, exploring sites frankly quite prosaic with the way Google translate loaded the page, wondering, hoping, and applying to test out new machinery, hoping

(begging)

             for maybe something preternatural to happen. Nevertheless, never. He headed to bed slightly disappointed, and not the slightest surprised. He clung onto the front of Phil’s shirt and breathed in his scent, and with his hair gripped firmly within Phil’s fingers, his eyes drooped and his heart slowed, and for a while he forgot how to see.

~

            “Dan. Dan. Dan,” Phil chanted, wildly shaking Dan’s shoulder, and Dan’s eyelids flew open, pupils dilating, his hand grasping at his pillow case. Fingernails dug into his palm, and he didn’t realize just how tight he held his fist until Phil pried them apart. “You were whimpering. Bad dream? Or low? Is your blood sugar low?”

            The room spun around him, not helping his case whatsoever. His stomach twisted and his skin was layered with a thin sheet of cold sweat; he wanted to shed it, the blanket burnt and he wanted it off, but he knew too well the exposure to the rest of the room would only chill him further. On the bright side, at least Phil woke him before he slipped into a coma.

            “Yeah your hands are sweaty, I’m going to guess you are low,” Phil narrated, taking Dan’s hand and brushing away beads of sweat forming underneath Dan’s hairline and he responded by burying his head further into the pillow. “You think you could hold a juice box yourself? I have to poke your finger, you know the procedure.”

            “I know the damn procedure- just get on with it, alright,” Dan whispered unnerving into the fabric of the blanket. Fabrics have no sense of pain. With Phil stumbling through the drawer on the other side of the room in the dark and Dan’s eyes desperately trying to adjust, the blanket underneath his fingertips might just be the very thing keeping Dan from slipping back into slumber and never waking up anytime soon. Frightening. Perhaps that very thought keeps him awake as well.

            “Did you know at one point in time making ugly faces at dogs was illegal in Oklahoma,” Phil stated.

            “Was it now,” Dan forced a chuckle at least, swallowing as his throat felt uncomfortably dry. “I’d like to see the court cases for-- fucking hell, Phil you could’ve given me _some_ time to enjoy your dumb little fact before obliterating my finger.”

            “Sorry,” Phil replied, a little _beep beep_ following suit indicating the removal of the test strip.

            “Well?” Dan asked.

            “Yeah,” Phil agreed.

            “Well what is my blood sugar, I meant,” Dan clarified, unnecessarily as it seemed, but--

            Phil paused. “Forty three.”

            “Damn,” Dan hushed, his heart beginning to pound inside his ribcage. _Breathe, Dan, Breathe._ “Shit.”

            “It’s going to be okay Dan; it’s going to be okay, you’re awake, and I’ll keep you awake if you need me to,” Phil assured, and soon enough the straw was in Dan’s mouth and what stung his tongue like a saccharin concoction triggered thoughts of how little of London has actually been woken up for the sake of drinking apple juice. He had learned how to suck on a straw with only half his conscious. Candidly, he thought that was quite a feat. Maybe even a little proud.

            “Yeah, I know I’m okay,” Dan replied. “But I still feel like shit and death seems quite close at hand.”

            “Nope.”

            Dan let out a bray of laughter, moving his hand and finding Phil’s fingers. “I’m aware.”

            “Mhm, because now…you are at 83, and it’s been properly twenty minutes. And we should sleep before we can see sunlight again.”

            Dan nodded, flipping over onto his side when Phil delved into the blankets again.

            “Aw, man.”

            “What now.”

            “This means no morning sex.”

~

            “Hey Dan, I’ve just got a text from, I do believe, Bryan from university, and apparently,” Phil hesitated and pursed his lips, a side of his nose twitched up and back down, “wants to see me again with—“

            He handed his phone to Dan: _Hey DUDE lol was wonderin about nice pubs down in Londin then remembrd u live thr, so check in on ya k?_

            “Well,” Dan snickered, sucking in his cheeks and making it seem he was one hundred percent nonchalant. “This guy seems cool.”

            “Hm,” Phil responded. “I don’t think I quite remember him. Oh, he said he stumbled onto one of our radio shows.”

            “That’s embarrassing, good god.”

            “So should we invite him?”

            “Yeah,” Dan said. “I’m curious as to see if he’s a dick or not.”

~

            “He’s such a dick. Why was he such a dick?” Dan groaned, hearing the door to their flat shut with such ferocity to rattle the lights. “Could he not control his mouth a while, I would think people would find it obvious the person who has the disease and has had the disease for years would know more than your grandpa trying to explain the world to you when you’re idk five.”

            “You got all that from the hour he was here?”

           “Implications. I mean anyone who says drinking _five glasses of milk per day_ cures diabetes can’t be too bright. And that immediately I’m a drug addict when he sees my shots. And that I ate too many sweets as a child and so karma. Type one diabetes isn’t caused by sugar come on. Why can’t that be common knowledge, don’t generalize both type one and type two together under a diabetic umbrella, it’s rude and disgraceful.”

            “I’m sensing something else here, you’ve ended incompletely,” Phil stated, patting the space between his legs for Dan to crawl into.

            “Hm,” Dan agreed.

            “Well then?” Phil urged, nosing into the back of Dan’s neck, and his shoulders detox, the stressed male pressing against Phil’s chest a bit more.

            “‘At least you don’t have cancer’, Phil that’s what he ended with. At least I don’t have cancer, yeah I get that, I know, but—“

            “What? He said that?  And I didn’t hear that?” Phil paused and pursed his lips. “That’s shitty. He doesn’t have the authority to say that.”

            “But, I don’t even know how to respond, in a sense he could be right, but I’ve got no knowledge of the subject—“

            “And he even less! He came down to London for purely alcohol. He shouldn’t have any say in what’s better than the other. Besides, even if you don’t have cancer, he shouldn’t just dismiss your tribulation like that, you have genuine problems that he may never get to know in his lifetime, and are completely valid. You weren’t even complaining, you were explaining, and now I hate someone.”

            “I’m sure he’s not that bad of a person. Like you said, you don’t even know him all that well.”

            “I hate him.”

            “Just because of what he said to me?”

            “Maybe.”

            “And they say I’m protective.”

            “You’re my Daniel. No one hurts my Daniel. My Daniel does not deserve to be hurt.”

            Dan huffed and Phil planted a kiss onto the back of Dan’s neck.

            “What would I do without you?”

            “Mm, I like to think you would’ve done well with or without me.”

            “Is that your subtle way of telling me you’re breaking up with me?”

            “Of course I am. I’m going to sit right here and watch as you pack your bags and take one thing as memorabilia of me and I’ll kick you to the curb.”

            “Dropkick?”

            “Yeah, I’ll dropkick you to the curb. Cartoon style.”

            “That’s a shame. I’m breaking up with you first.”

            “Aw, Dan. Then who’s going to protect you from people like Bryan?”

            “…Right. People like Bryan. Mr. Dickhead.”

            Dan’s eyes crinkled archaically and sighed. “I want to throw things at the wall, break something maybe.”

            Dan darted a glance at Phil then curled up, his back against Phil’s ribcage and he feels the soft push of Phil’s lungs when he inhaled. “I’m too tired though.”

            Phil looked around, picking up a wooden pencil and effortlessly snapping it in halves. Dan shook with a small chuckle.

            “You try so hard,” Dan said. His left hand went around and grabbed at Phil’s, and Phil let him; in return Phil’s other hand began to shift in Dan’s hair.

            “I do try hard,” Phil agreed, kissing the top of Dan’s head. “I try so hard all the time.”

            “Let’s not do that again, yeah?” Dan sighed. And Phil could only hum a small tune of assertion.

            “Dan,” Phil flittered, his fingers running through Dan’s hair smoothed to a stop and Dan opened an eye in acknowledgment. “If you could go back in time and somehow not have diabetes, would you do it? Would you choose not to have it?”

            Dan pursed his lips, closing his eyes once more as his eyebrows fitted together in thought.

            “That’s a simple question with a hidden complicated answer beneath it, tbh. I don’t know, Phil, I can’t be too sure of anything. I mean, as much as I’d like to say some stoic phrase like ‘no of course not, I wouldn’t be able to overcome as much hardship as I have without this chronic illness, and it has taught me so much self respect and responsibility and later I’m going to shove a dozen cockroaches up my asshole

             “Of course I would,” Dan answered. “Are you kidding me? From age six it’s like a bag of rocks just slung over your shoulder, Phil, this stupid disease becomes your entire life, and it just doesn’t stop. You and that bag of rocks are thrown onto this rollercoaster you haven’t even built yet, ‘cause you’re just constructing it as you go, so unless you want to be flung off your own damn life then yeah, it’s a hell lot of effort. Also I’m definitely not perfect. I’ve been flung off a couple of times, I’m sure you’re all too aware.”

               Phil hummed in agreement and leaned on his elbow as he massaged Dan’s scalp.

               “You grow up too fast, that’s a con. I wanted to dissolve, Phil, when I was younger. Everyone was scared of needles, so logically they avoided me like I was a zombie or something,” Dan laughed mockingly and adjusted his position, staring into the ceiling like it was the source of his explanation. “I think I matured too quickly and that scared me a ton, definitely, but I think the worst… the worst would be-- I don’t know Phil, I’m sure that my diabetes probably had something to do with me meeting you somehow. Something good had to come out of this, right? But just think if I could live the exact same life just without diabetes,

               “Just think about how much _more_ I could do? I don’t need my organ to malfunction to teach me responsibility. I certainly don’t need people who try but never can understand, or even worse, people who don’t attempt to try. I don’t need needles, and sleep deprivation, and monitoring what I eat. You love me, and god, am I so lucky to be able to say that, but imagine a life of which you wouldn’t have to do any of this for me, you wouldn’t have to see me suffer on long flights or stay in bed all day disgusted with myself, or on a hospital bed in the sickening white. I would be less annoying. We could be happy.”

               Silence. And all Phil does was tangle their feet and breathe into the crook of Dan’s neck. Silence. Almost as if affirmation.

              “You agree,” Dan said, tinted with dismay.

              “Yeah I do, but we were happy, we are happy, and we will be,” Phil hurriedly patched. “You’re here with me, and I love you more than I’ve loved anything, and I don’t care if it’s harder to love you because frankly it’s not.

              “I know how to defend your honor and fight against the Huns, but more importantly I know how to help and I trust you. We’ve got the world in our hands, Dan, so if you seem it fit we could help Mulan save all of China too.”

              Dan’s growing smile quickly turned into a yawn. “Shut up. You’re ridiculous. Mulan would be the last person to need any help saving China.”

“Mmph, or…

            I could help you with something else”

 

              Dan ends up on his bed with his fingers carefully folded over his stomach, with Phil’s substantial breathing soft and calming beside him, his side rising up and down steadily and his back leg crossed over Dan’s shin. He was asleep, and Dan could never understand how he did it so quickly. It was evenings like these of which Dan felt he could only think, his eyes slightly adjusted to the dark with the yellowed streetlights a few stories below that still managed to creep into their windows, and the faint beading sweat still coating his skin.

            _“What about you, Daniel? What would you like to be when you grow up?”_ the nice lady had said. He’s forgotten her name now, but she was young, she was young and she was new, and Dan was the last to go in his class. She had steady hands when she administered his shots, as his six year old arms couldn’t quite handle the sting of the syringe and the plain _medical_ smell of the insulin in the vial. He hates hospitals. He hates when he’s admitted to one and his mother has to kiss his dried cheeks and his father holds his weak hands. His things were inside a satchel with Pooh bear stitched into the side at the back of the classroom, and it was as if poison seeped from that corner, directly linked to this boy that was questioned by the young and new teacher, and he was the last to go in his class.

            _A scarecrow_ , he answered. He looked around the classroom, and had wondered if it was expected amongst the firefighters and pastry chefs and ballet dancers. _I wan’ be a scarecrow on top of the hill with the overalls and everythin’._

            Being such a little boy, becoming a scarecrow didn’t seem half bad. His needles, granted it being in front of the eyes of small, meter tall children, were indeed terrifying, and he was no exception of it. His heart beat to the ravine’s edge when receiving his treatments, and he sits on the fence sometimes whispering to himself that he’d be able to scare away as many crows as the scarecrow can on top of the barren hills.

            So maybe, as Dan lays thinking on his bed with Phil breathing puffs into his neck having rolled over, the schoolchildren were only crows. Flocks of loud noises, misting over the grounds like herds and avoiding the scarecrow without ever really seeing its face. They had good reason to do so, however; a reason why a group of crows is called a murder. They were only schoolchildren. They have the right to be assholes.

            _A scarecrow,_ he had answered, and none of the other children’s faces seemed to change. Perhaps they weren’t listening. _I wan’ be a scarecrow on top of the hill with the overalls and everythin’._

Dan grabbed blindly beside him, knocking his phone off the bed.

“Mhm, Dan?” Phil muffled, struggling to open one eye let alone two. “I can hear you breathing, you’re so very”—he yawns and snuggles closer into Dan’s shoulder—“loud and you should sleep.”

            Dan smiled and turned toward Phil’s fluttering eyelids and bunched their hands one on top of the other between them.

            “And so I shall,” Dan answered. Phil chuckled.

            “I’m going to drag you into my dream with me. It was a pleasant dream. It just lacked you. And since I’m going to drag you into my dream with me, it’ll be a very great dream,” Phil slurred, throwing his arm around Dan’s chest.

            “Okay, okay, I wouldn’t want to miss out on that.”

            “Good.”

            “But there is a slight problem.”

            “What do you want.”

            “You’re choking me.”

 

 

            “Sorry.”


End file.
